9 Climate-Fiction Books for Earth Day That'll Scare You into Going Green

The novel A Friend of the Earth by T. C. Boyle was one of those college assignments that I consumed like it was a guilty pleasure. Unlike the hordes of American novellas and Romantic-era classics that I skimmed, shamefacedly, I took A Friend of the Earth home with me on break and wept over the ending. I read the novel for a class on fiction and the environment, and its effect on me was as devastating as, well, the effect of humans on the planet that the book so powerfully portrayed.

The novel was published in 2000 and set in the far-off realm of 2025 — a date that'll be here in barely 10 years. Though the term didn't really exist at the time, A Friend of the Earth could be classified as "cli-fi," or climate fiction, a sub-genre of science-fiction that focuses on the devastating, dystopian effects of climate change. If you're looking for some Earth Day reading that's by turns thrilling, sobering, and terrifying, turn to one of these cli-fi novels that examine humankind's relationship to the planet, and fearlessly imagine the consequences.